See Also

Illegal Underage Drinking Arrests

A Washington DC Superior Court judge has ordered the city to stop
charging underage drinkers with a crime, because it is a civil infraction
-- not a crime -- under city law.

Plaintiffs, many of them college students, complain criminal arrests
for the infraction give them damaging criminal records that plague
them for life.

Instead of being given citations similar to traffic tickets, as
should happen with civil infractions, those charged were routinely
arrested, taken to a police station, photographed, fingerprinted,
and often jailed.

An earlier lawsuit contends that people arrested for underage possession
were subjected to wrongful arrest and seeks to have their records
cleared and paid damages for those wrongful arrests.

“Carol Elder Bruce, the attorney who filed the suit, said
police and prosecutors want to have the threat of jail and a criminal
record at their disposal because they believe it serves as a deterrent
-- whether it is legal or not.

“’They are deliberately trying to teach these kids
a lesson by treating them roughly, by intimidating them and mocking
them and making them as uncomfortable as possible,’ said
Bruce.”

The D.C. Chief of Police was unhappy at his department’s
inability now to break the law to enforce a non-existing law.